Tiny Drone-Based Surveillance System Can Watch Over a Entire Small Town

One of the most useful things about drones is their ability to tirelessly loiter for hours at a time. Combined that with a wide-area camera and you've got a combination that a visual record of everything below that moves or changes over time. One of the best new examples is the Integrator unmanned aerial vehicle paired with the new Redkite wide-area motion imaging package, which shrinks this tech into a small package that can record the area of an entire small town.

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The threat of terrorism in the post-9/11 world turned the world of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) on its head. Previously, the most important feature for drone and other surveillance platforms was range, especially against conventional enemies operating hundreds of miles away. Today, though, our enemies might be living in relatively close proximity to military and law enforcement, emerging only briefly to conduct business before slipping back into the shadows. Persistence—the ability to stay on station for hours just for the opportunity to collect a nugget of data—became the new watchword.

The Redkite integrated sensor package. Once development is completed the package will be approximately 41 inches by 8 inches and weigh less than 25 pounds. Via Insitu.

Wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) is one solution. With WAMI, a drone can point its unblinking eye at the ground below, capturing a medium definition image twice a second. If, for example a car bomb is detonated within the field of view, WAMI will record it. The user can then scroll backward in time, like a DVR recording, and watch the car bomb being driven out of a garage, down the street, and into the location where it will ultimately explode. That sort of information can ultimately lead investigators to the perpetrators.

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One of the first WAMI systems was Constant Hawk, a 1,500-pound package fitted to Shorts 360 passenger aircraft converted to surveillance platforms. Developed by Logos Technologies, Constant Hawk was rushed to Iraq in 2006 by the U.S. Army as a Quick Reaction Capability. There, it tracked and helped to identify insurgents ambushing convoys and planting improvised explosive devices. It was later sent to Afghanistan in 2009.

Founded in 1996, Logos Technologies is a defense contractor that specializes in wide-area motion imagery packages, especially making them smaller, lighter, and less power-hungry. (It's also worth mentioning Logos also builds ultra-quiet hybrid-electric dirt bikes for special forces operators.) In the span of four years, Logos technology has shrunk from a 1,500-pound package in Constant Hawk to a 53-pound package in a RQ-7 Shadow-class drone in 2010. Now, the company has shrunk that same capability set—including camera, onboard processing, data storage, and communications relay—yet again, down to 31 lbs. in a package named Redkite.

A Redkite-equipped Integrator drone during testing. Via Insitu.

The Redkite package consists of a 50-megapixel sensor that snaps an image every other second. It can monitor a nearly 5 by 5 square mile area from 12,000 feet. Redkite stores the collected imagery on solid state drives and also beams it to ground stations via data link. Redkite comes in both a podded system that attaches externally to manned aircraft and UAVs and an integrated version that fits inside a drone's payload bay.

Currently, Logos is concentrating on fitting the integrated version into Insitu's Integrator tactical unmanned aerial system. A subsidiary of aviation giant Boeing, the Washington-based Insitu has considerable experience supplying drones to the Pentagon, including the Scan Eagle to the Navy and the RQ-21A Blackjack to the Navy and Marine Corps. (Integrator and Blackjack are virtually the same thing.) According to Logos' president John Marion, the Redkite package was "surprisingly easy" to integrate into the drone, once minor vibrational and power supply issues were dealt with.

Integrator/Redkite first flew earlier this month at Insitu's Oregon test range. The Redkite package demonstrated its ability to survive the equivalent of eighteen Earth gravities the Integrator's catapult launch exerts on its payload (human beings typically black out at 9 sustained Gs) and went on to perform a three hour mission. More tests to validate the program are due in April. Once complete, Redkite will give governments a powerful tool to track terrorism and low-intensity conflict, identifying the perpetrators of attacks and ultimately preventing future ones.

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